IRM Focus

Reach a global audience

While it has been a difficult couple of months, IRM’s interest groups have successfully adapted to serve members online, says Rahat Latif

When I took on the role of chair of IRM’s Interest Group Committee last year, I sought to obtain the views of all the interest groups about what areas they’d like to see IRM improve or enhance. Two areas which got a particularly high vote were better sharing of live events via webinars to a global audience, and more collaboration between the interest groups.

One consequence from the current restriction on movement and social contact has been that it has forced events onto online platforms and hence fulfils those wishes. It’s really great to see that many of the interest groups have positively embraced this move.

Since March when social distance rules came into place, the following groups have held webinars: Qatar Regional Interest Group (RIG) on pandemic planning and building financial resilience; Innovation Special Interest Group (SIG) on innovation and another on resilience; Energy SIG on global events, pandemics and the future of oil and gas; NED and CRO SIG launch event; IOR England and Wales on COVID-19 – black swan or grey rhino?; Infrastructure RIG on sharing best practice globally; Pakistan RIG on COVID-19, crisis management and business continuity; Switzerland RIG on employee mental health.

Intimately involved

By and large, discussions on the pandemic have supported the results of IRM’s recent survey in highlighting that risk managers have been intimately involved in supporting the management of the crisis, through for example scenario analysis and planning and risk-based decisionmaking. Beyond the crisis, organisations will be looking for their ERM teams to evolve to provide leadership on a holistic approach to risk and resilience management.

On June 11, 2020, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain RIG will host a webinar on business continuity and resilience; on June 29, 2020, IOR England and Wales will host a webinar on risk governance oversight – good practice and challenges.

I’ve been receiving very positive feedback on the webinars’ effectiveness. Interest groups have said that, while the lack of physical proximity is an obvious disadvantage, this is counterbalanced by the significant advantage of being able to attract a global audience, together with the ability to interact with them through the message, video and voting features of the webinar technology. Not only that, webinars usually have higher attendance than their “physical” counterparts. For example, the Pakistan RIG webinar I was part of recently recorded an audience of 130. The IOR England and Wales one attracted 149.

In the absence of physical meetings at this time, I would encourage all interest groups to try running webinars and to collaborate with other interest groups

Greater collaboration

The online events have also provided a great opportunity for inter-group collaboration. For example, the Climate Change SIG chair was an invited speaker at the Energy SIG webinar. Similarly, the Midlands RIG also collaborated with the Innovation SIG for their online event. Not having to travel, naturally, makes collaboration that much easier.

In the absence of physical meetings at this time, I would encourage all interest groups to try running webinars and to collaborate with other interest groups. In fact, even when things are back to normal, my guess is that given their success we will continue to see more webinars in addition to regular events. At IRM we will look into the possibility of doing both concurrently – running a regular physical event with a live global audience!

Rahat Latif is chair of IRM Interest Groups Committee and IRM board member.